Weekend off

Today it clouded over a little bit here in Davos so I’m finally able to get a few things done in the computer. The last few days have been awesome though making it tough to not put in some huge training days on some perfect skiing conditions and just waste the afternoon away hanging out on the deck. It feels amazing to get back to the sun of central europe after a few weeks on the E block tour.

Poland actually wasn’t so bad although.. .but we’ve had some sickness floating around the team and a gnarly stomach bug that keeps taking down team mates left and right. It was funny coming back to Sklarska Poeraba because it was the first international race I ever traveled to as a J1 to compete at worlds almost 10 years ago and I have to admit not a whole lot has changed. One of the things that made such a huge impression on me as a Junior and still holds true now is how insane the fans are for xc skiing in Poland. Every day the stands were packed with people who were definitely stoked for the polish skiers but cheered really loudly for everyone racing. They take womens ski racing very seriously there and even mad the men start first on the distance day, which is something you almost never see on the world cup.

As a team we raced pretty well in Poland. the sprint course was exactly the same as it was when we ere Juniors which was fun because it’s a kinda fast and exciting course. It’s definitely one of those sprints where skis and tactics played a little bit of a role in the outcome…. which sucked because I didn’t do a very good job at either of those. But it was still sweet. So although I didn’t have a great finish on sprint day it wasn’t without it’s small victories. I won a bet with Jessie, and although it was VERY close, I still won which forced Diggs to go knock on the Norwegian wax trailer and ask the head wax tech if she could put a Justin Bieber sticked on their wax bus. I thought it was a pretty good punishment.

After 3 races in Poland I we were pretty tired and not looking forward to a 9+ hour drive back to Switzerland but on Monday we had to move on. The morning didn’t start out too sweet either since Kikkan and I got the pukes right before we were scheduled to start the road trip. The stomach bug struck again. For me it wasn’t too bad and within a few hours I felt ok but it was still a rough way to start a trip. we had 2 vans and a cargo so Liz was nice enough to risk the sick van and drive with kikkan and I so we took turns behind the wheel and made it to Davos in about 10 hours.

So with the weekend off from World Cups we are going to be training here for the next 6 days and enjoying some down time before the last period of racing. Once racing kicks up again next weekend in Lahti things more very quickly through the end of the season with a lot of back to back racing. So it’s a good time to re charge the batteries here in the Davos sun.

to say there is a lot of snow here would be an understatement….. big snow banks outside our Hotel Kulm

training with Idaphone… she’s probably just letting out a big yell cause she’s so stoked with the skiing. striding toward Davos